I agree with this 100%. As a SaaS business they are going to be spending a lot of time working out what state their buyers are in and what tax to add to the sale. For this reason we incorporated in the UK (We are London based) and charged no tax for our US customers. All we had to do was call the IRS and get an EIN to provide to our larger customers, which was a fairly painless and free process.
> IBM when it takes over operations often hires the IT staff of the firm it is taking over operations from and runs systems on multiple-year contracts.
I've seen this happen many times and it's always been successful. They can replicate the business processes they've honed over time whilst keeping that important business knowledge. It's also often better for the staff as they can hand off that knowledge and move internally within IBM to new and more challenging roles without switching employers.
I've seen this happen too. But people who wanted to work for company X for whatever reason, not for IBM (or whoever).
Now they work for IBM, and all the things they did above-and-beyond their job description are now billable. Now their incentive isn't to help company X that they wanted to work for, but to screw company X for every nickel-and-dime because that's where their new employer's revenue comes from. And they know all the skeletons in the closet and all the pain points.
Stab good people in the back and you make powerful enemies, the managers of all the company X's out there never learn this lesson.
Interesting. In IT circles IBM is generally regarded as "worst of class", due to continual waves of firing competent employees, outsourcing, and many other dodgy practises. A recent example (there are many, many more):
As someone who works closely with these teams within Microsoft, I can say that these team members are having a huge, positive impact on the Office division.
I use a British Airways branded Amex here in the UK and put almost all my spending through it. Thanks to their Companion Voucher my wife and I get a couple of business class trips on the house each year (Spend £10k in a year on it and get a Buy one get one free flight with points)
I don't believe you get to rate a passenger unless a successful transaction has occurred. I had an Uber driver in NYC explain this to me in very clear terms (apparently he'd had even more last-minute cancellations than usual that day).
Does it bother anyone else that when you try to visit the Google post explaining that they are using HTTPs as a ranking signal via https it redirects to http?
That is the "killer app" here, basically a package deal. Also easy to monetize as you're converting customers for the various participating parties (phone/cowork/hostel/etc). If you can make it 'on demand' so that as someone walks off the plane they can stop at the "Nomadics" kiosk and say, "1 person, 2 months, no smoking." and be handed sim/annotated map/authcode for keyapp/token for shuttle and walk out of the airport and be productive an hour later.
To make that work you would need pre-arranged contracts with a co-working space, some hostels/hotels, phone companies, and transportation services. Using an NFC app to grant access to a coworking space/hotel room would minimize things like key management/inventory. It would be primarily a logistics play but if there are enough people doing this sort of thing it could be profitable.
That's what I was thinking too. What would you like to pay for that? Let's say a pre-paid data SIM card, a day pass in a coworking space, a low-end hotel night near the space altogether?
For me the question isn't really "how much would I pay", but more like "how much markup would I pay for the service of someone doing all that setup work". If you make a breakdown of the cost of all the items and then show me that the package includes a markup which is still much less than my hourly rate for doing the setup work, then I'd probably buy it.
Maybe there should be some way for nomadlist to allow people to offer these?
I could surely come up with a plan where you get mobile internet, access to a coworking space and accommodation if you want to come to Tokushima, Japan to "sightsee" for a month and even meet you at the airport, as I know some people who have a coworking space here. I'm sure others could do that for their own cities.
Not sure what a reasonable fee would be? Would probably take a whole day to organize this for someone, although it sounds fun to meet people.
If I could even go so far as to prepay for a set amount of time (1 to 6 months) for rent, sim, internet, and co-working space and have it all taken care of when I arrive, that would be even better.
I agree with paraschopra. Many places I have worked have included a clause in the employment contract that says something along the lines of "Anything you create whilst working for us, including in your own time, will become property of our company"
I can't believe some companies include such clause, I would never sign such bullshit agreement. I can understand a clause against creating something that can be a competition to your employer products, but other than that - stay away from my free time.
It seems that many professional programmers like to program on their spare time, maybe in order to use other technologies or something else. And yet companies like these want to be able to enforce that they can take over all that code produced in your free time... what the hell? Apparently they want to stifle people's creativity and discourage people who want to hone their craft outside of their job. Looks like a lose-lose, to me.
Maybe the company and the programmer doesn't care when the code produced is toy-programs/educational code, but it seems like a deal-breaker if the programmer wants to make some open-source code, or maybe even some code to produce some extra income. (I don't see a problem with the latter if it's in another domain than what the programmer is employed as.)
There's doubt if such clauses are even legal. Depending on the wording of the clause it could be considered restraint of trade. I would also never sign such a contract. I would strike the clause and see what they say. If they try and defend the 'your own time' part, I would take that as meaning they actively intend to steal my personal work.
I think the laws are different depending on the state but most of those overly broad agreements are not enforceable. Usually it has to be something that you could have only created with proprietary knowledge gained from your employer or access to customers gained during the course of business. So just because you are a web developer by day, your employers do not own the Minecraft forum you maintain by night.
I'm not a lawyer, so this is just my fuzzy recollection of what my lawyers told me. If you've got something serious on the line, a good lawyer's time is a cheap investment that will pay dividends in the long run.
Interesting. I've only ever had good experiences with black cabs. Especially if there are road works or traffic, they seem to know exactly which street to turn down without any sort of aid.
The Uber drivers I've used in London have always used GPS and gone down routes which I would consider slower and more expensive.
